Random Thoughts: Albany’s Options and Seals Offensive Struggles

My random thoughts…

We’re now nearing the midway point of the season.  Rochester is past its midway point, Albany and Colorado have reached it and most teams will get there within the next two weekends. We’re at the stage where not every game is make or break, but the wins or losses will start to add up. Given that you only play each opponent once or twice per season, those games against teams you’re close to in the standings could mean double by the end of the season because of tiebreaks.

But we are starting to see some trends.  Buffalo is still a wagon.  Saskatchewan is proving they’re for real.  Toronto is on the comeback.  Albany’s struggles continue.  San Diego and Ottawa’s offences have sputtered.  And what happened in Vegas, well, I’ve said my peace on social media and I’ll leave it at that.

Warriored Out

Vancouver made one of its longest possible road trips this past weekend heading to the Nest to take on the Thunderbirds in the TSN Friday night game.  Vancouver is hard to define and must be sometimes frustrating for their fans, especially given the high pre-season expectations fans had of the team. 

Before the start of the season, the big question mark was goaltending.  But Aden Walsh is posting the second best GSAA in the league at 10.11 and a league-leading GAA of 9.15 amongst goaltenders with at least 100 minutes played.  With numbers like this, you would expect the Warriors to be at least 6-2, possibly 7-1 this season.  But Walsh has lost three games where he’s allowed 9, 10 and 11 goals.  If you hold a team to 10 goals, there shouldn’t be an excuse for your offence to produce enough to carry you through.  But that’s exactly what’s happening in Vancouver.

They lost this game in Halifax 10-9. Despite going down early, Vancouver rallied late in the first, going on a 4-0 run.  But this was quite fortunate.  Their 4^th goal, late in the opening quarter, came on just their 6^th shot on goal.  Warren Hill has struggled in goal most of this season.  The plan should have been simple, get shots on net, throw some bouncers in the mix, and goals will come.  But instead, Vancouver was trying to pick the corner too hard, or throwing passes that were ill advised, or taking shot clock violations. 

Even when guys were open through the middle, they weren’t feeding them. Ten minutes in, the Warriors had one shot on goal.  Then this repeated itself all over again.  At the 10:30 mark of the 2^nd quarter, the Warriors got their 13^th shot on goal.  15 minutes later, they only had 16 shots.  Just three shots on goal in a 15-minute span, against a goaltender that the object should be to just shoot. 

It defies explanation. 

In that same timeframe, the Thunderbirds would go on a 6-0 run that would ultimately catapult them to victory.  That run was made worse due to injuries to both Owen Grant and Matt Beers.  While Grant eventually returned to the game, Beers’ injury appears at first glance to be something that is potentially more serious.  When it’s a non-contact injury and he has to be lifted off the floor, it isn’t good.

The Warriors finally got to shooting late in the third quarter, finishing the last 25 minutes with 22 SOG, but it just fell short.  Let’s look at Vancouver’s season stats so far.  They’re averaging just 10 goals per game and only are allowing 9.25.  But with Beers out, that could affect that low GA total going forward.  On offence, Owen Grant is still fourth in team goals, scoring at a rate of 1.13 goals/game.  The defensive unit as a whole has nearly a quarter of the team’s goals.  Could we see some action from Curt Malawsky before the deadline to get some additional firepower in the lineup, especially on the lefty side?

Halifax needs to be proud of its defensive effort, which despite a shaky start to the year, has had back to back decent performances.  One key for them was Ryan Terefenko’s hat trick.  Given Vancouver’s defensive prowess, getting transition goals where the defense was unsettled was massive.  The stunning stat of the night, Jake Withers won just 30% of his draws.  Props to Alex Stathakis for his performance, but this has happened a handful of times to Withers this season where he’s normally dominant, but sits at 50% of his draws won for the season.  Is there an injury, or a lack of confidence, or have others caught onto his style? Tough to say.  But me must be frustrated.

Sask is For Real But Questions in San Diego

A week and a half ago, you could have easily had doubts in the Rush’s ability to keep their momentum going.  Frank Scigliano wasn’t available due to the birth of his child.  Thomas Kiazyk was making his first career start.  The Rush went down 4-0 quickly.  Jake Naso was out of the game soon afterwards and still hasn’t returned.  A realistic hope for this stretch was to try to split.  A two-game losing streak wouldn’t be out of the question.  Instead, the Rush come out with two wins, a confident backup goaltender, some much needed rest for Scigliano and are second in the league standings at 6-2.

Kiazyk’s two game win streak couldn’t come at a better time with a double header weekend against Calgary and Rochester coming up on Valentine’s Day weekend.  Its reasonable to expect that Kiazyk will play one of those games.

But the big story in the Rush’s 12-8 win over the Seals this weekend was how anemic the Seals’ offense has become.  A first half without a single goal on Saturday.  Granted Kiazyk was seeing the ball well and the Rush defence was limiting quality shots.  But when you have the offensive firepower the Seals do with the likes of Hellyer, Benesch, McIntosh, Berg and company, a shutout for an entire half shouldn’t happen.

The Seals made the necessary adjustments at half time and came roaring out of the gate with five goals in seven minutes and Kiazyk’s confidence was shaken for a while.  With the Seals within three, it was a case of whether Kiazyk could find that first half confidence again. The Rush offence provided enough support from there on out to keep the game at a distance.

There has to be concerns in San Diego.  They’ve lost their last three.  They’ve scored 10 or fewer goals in their last five games.  The only game they won over that stretch was the 6-5 win over Ottawa.  Chris Origlieri’s normally strong play has dissipated to a -5.41 GSAA and a GAA of 11.26.  This is despite Kyle Rubisch having another strong year.

But even at one stage, Patrick Merrill seemed disengaged from the game.  When Robert Church scores early in the fourth quarter, Merrill throws the challenge flag and I’m not sure why.  Church is clearly outside the crease when he jumps and the ball is clearly across the goal line before he lands.  The review didn’t last long, and you could see the frustration in Merrill’s face.  But what to do about it.  I’m not certain there is much to do about it.  With that much superstar power, there isn’t much you can do in terms of personnel to change things.  Its just a system change and finding ways to get their confidence back.

San Diego’s next three games are against Toronto and a back-to-back with Buffalo.  If things don’t turn around for them quickly, they could be 3-8 by the end of the month and out of the playoff race.  Of all the teams on the outside looking in for the playoffs, the Seals are certainly the biggest surprise on the list.

One other thing from this game, but Matt Hossack might be having one of the most underrated seasons in the league.  He’s the league leader in CTO’s with 23, 2^nd on the Rush in both blocks and loose balls (only Mike Messenger has more and his LB total includes faceoff wins).  And oh yeah, he has zero penalty minutes. 

Hossack’s return from Panther City has been a major defensive spark for the Rush.  It was unfortunate that Hossack had to leave in the first place, but he was the odd man out when the Rush had a deep roster to protect during Panther City’s expansion draft.  As much as Hossack was familiar with the Rush’s systems, he was playing with an almost entirely new set of teammates from when he previously left in the expansion draft.  Perhaps by the end of the year, when it comes time for the DPOTY voting, people will start to notice.

The Trade Deadline

The trade deadline is still six weeks away, and for most teams still in the thick of the race, its too early to think about whether you start to deal veteran pieces for future assets.  Jamie Dawick hinted at the possibility of trading veterans on Lacrosse Classified, but made it clear that it was dependent upon the team turning the season around quickly. 

Now with a three-game winning streak, almost all of this top players back in the lineup, and a world of confidence, the Rock are looking far more likely to make the playoffs and that thought is probably permanently on hold barring a sudden collapse.

But this reality might be setting in for Albany.  At 2-7, a slough of defensive woes with Wagner, Nishimura and Watkinson all on the IR, and Doug Jamieson not being the goaltender of the past that can steal games, it would be difficult to see a scenario where Albany goes 7-2 or at worst 6-3 the rest of the way to get into a playoff spot.

One question I was asked this past weekend is what does Albany do next?  The first problem is in terms of rental players, Albany doesn’t have anything available.  There are only two pending UFA’s this offseason for the Firewolves, Watkinson and Callum Crawford, and both are on the IR.  Albany has defensive needs, but there’s only two ways to fix that.  One is to trade a forward for young defensive assets.  The other is to trade young offensive assets for draft picks.

Albany is in a tight situation.  For this upcoming draft, Vegas owns their 1^st round pick (part of the Justin Geddie trade where 1^st round picks were swapped), Saskatchewan owns their 2^nd round pick (Marshall Powless trade), Ottawa owns their 3^rd round pick (Leo Stouros trade).  Albany’s first pick of the upcoming draft won’t come until Colorado’s spot in the 3^rd round.  That pick is unlikely to get you the player you need to turn your defense around.

Is there a beneficial trade where Albany and another team can swap young players that is mutually beneficial, or Albany can pick up draft picks?  It’s a wait and see.

The RMLL Draft

This week, the RMLL held its player draft.  Perhaps someone can explain to me why there is a player draft in the first place.  It makes sense in Ontario and BC where the teams are a lot closer together and there aren’t many geographical constraints for most players to play on most every team, unless you live on Vancouver Island and the ferries make travel considerably longer.  The RMLL is far different.  Saskatoon is a 5.5 hour drive to Edmonton and a 7 hour drive to Calgary.  The Miners have more than a 3 hour drive to their nearest opponent in the Mountaineers.  To put that into perspective, the drive from Peterborough to either Kitchener or St. Catherines, the longest I could find in the OJLL, is shorter than the shortest road trip for Edmonton and twice as short as Saskatchewan’s shortest drive.

Because of all this, there are almost no trades involving draft picks.  Saskatchewan is drafting only Saskatchewan kids.  The Miners are only drafting from northern Alberta.  The only two teams really drafting are Calgary and Okotoks.  They should go to a system for the SWAT and Miners where they simply have protected lists.  Draw a line at Lloydminster on one side, and just north of Red Deer on the other, and not bother with a draft.

The distance does limit the SWAT.  Keep in mind, this is a team that has one win and one tie on the floor in the last three seasons and ever since Lax Mag started its Junior A rankings, the SWAT have been dead last in them every single week.  I hope this crop of youth helps alleviate that a bit, but I’ll believe it when they start producing some results.

But yeah, the concept of a draft should just be left to Calgary and Okotoks.  It makes no sense for the other two teams.

Until next time…